1997 Porsche 911 (993) Turbo S

This 1997 Porsche 911 Turbo S is finished in Guards Red over black leather with carbon fibre interior trim, and is offered from Constantia, Cape Town by constantia_993, about this seller, its third owner and the keeper of the car for fourteen years. It shows 61,800km. The Turbo S was assembled by Porsche Exclusive on top of the 993 Turbo, and 345 were built worldwide across 1997 and 1998.

The car is left-hand drive and was imported from Germany in 2011 at 29,400km, with the German service book stamped seven times to that point. The import file, the SARS release and the police clearance are published with the lot, as is the Porsche certificate of authenticity confirming the Turbo S build and its original specification. Buyers should read the papers as an import history rather than an SA delivery, because that is what it is.

Under this owner the file runs continuously. Dampers, bushes and a geometry set in 2013, valve cover and chain housing gaskets with plugs and coil packs in 2018, both K16 turbochargers rebuilt with new boost pipes and couplings in 2021, and a clutch, dual mass flywheel and rear main seal in 2023 while the gearbox was out. A leak-down test was run on all six cylinders ahead of the sale and the figures are in the document set.

The flaws the seller states are a secondary air injection fault that returns on a cold start in cold weather and has been cleared rather than cured, stone chip damage to the fins of the front left oil cooler, a lacquer crack in the carbon dash trim above the glovebox, and a creased driver's bolster. One question went unanswered: asked whether the engine had ever been remapped before he bought it, the seller declined, saying he has no way of knowing what the first two owners did. Bidders should price that accordingly.

The 993 was the last air-cooled 911, and the Turbo was the first 911 Turbo with four-wheel drive and the first with two turbochargers. The twin K16 arrangement made the 3.6 flat six answer immediately where the single turbo cars had made owners wait, which is the reason the 993 Turbo is the one usually described as the first genuinely usable 911 Turbo.

The Turbo S sat above it. Porsche Exclusive raised the engine to 331kW with larger turbochargers, revised intercoolers and reworked engine electronics, added the extra air scoops in the rear quarters and the four pipe exhaust, fitted cross drilled brakes behind yellow calipers, and trimmed the cabin in carbon fibre. Production ran to 345 cars, and it was the final air-cooled Turbo Porsche built.

Almost none came to South Africa new. The cars that are here arrived as private imports, which makes the paperwork and the specification check the whole argument for any given example. A certificate of authenticity and a continuous file matter more on this model than on almost anything else of its era.